


The Same Amount of Cute

by KennaM



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Babyfic, Big Brothers, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 19:58:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4150917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KennaM/pseuds/KennaM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Tadashi was seven years old when his mom came home from the hospital with his baby brother.</p>
<p>He slept for a week in the apartment above his aunt’s café, while his parents stayed overnights at the hospital. 'He’s too small,' his aunt explained while he watched her bake the first batch of muffins for the day, 'he was born too early. The doctors need to keep him so they can make sure he’s OK.'”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Same Amount of Cute

Tadashi was seven years old when his mom came home from the hospital with his baby brother.

He slept for a week in the apartment above his aunt’s café, while his parents stayed overnights at the hospital. “He’s too small,” his aunt explained while he watched her bake the first batch of muffins for the day, “he was born too early. The doctors need to keep him so they can make sure he’s OK.”

At the end of the week, she drove them back to his apartment so they could be there to meet his parents when they got home. Tadashi bounced in the backseat of the car and ignored the books he’d brought along to keep him entertained, anxious to finally be back home, and to see his mom again. His dad had come to visit them at the shop, but it was never for very long, and when he was there he mostly chatted with Tadashi’s aunt and not Tadashi himself. He missed his mom.

Tadashi’s aunt let him go answer to knock at the apartment door when it finally came. His dad stood in the doorway, weighed down with bags and cases, and Tadashi stared up at him, surprised to be the one to let his own dad into his own home. “Hey buddy,” his dad said. Tadashi was used to seeing him smile, but this time there was a new sparkle in his dad’s eyes. “Want to help me with these? Your mom’s got a surprise for you.”

He grabbed a heavy cooler from his dad’s hand and lugged it to the kitchen. His aunt had disappeared, but when he ran back to the front door he saw her enter with his mom, another bag over her shoulder and an arm around her sister’s waist to support her, so she could focus on the bundle in her arms.

Tadashi wasn’t an idiot. He knew what it meant, when his mom’s stomach started to grow and his parents told him about the new baby on the way. He saw babies, on TV or in movies, or crying on the bus, and paid special attention to his friends’ little siblings when he went to their homes to visit.

None of that had prepared him for seeing his own little brother for the first time, however. His mom took a spot on the couch and then waved him over, and he stood up on the cushions next to her to peer down into the bundle. “His name is Hiro,” he told him. Her voice seemed weak, and he glanced over at her face to see if she was OK. “This is your little brother.”

Tadashi blinked, then looked down at the squished, blotchy pink face. “He looks funny,” Tadashi said, and frowned. His mom laughed softly.

“He’s just a baby,” she said. “And he’s been in an incubator for a week.” Tadashi thought about the incubators he’d seen on TV, the ones on the animal documentaries where baby chickens were hatched, and he tilted his head in confusion. “But once he starts growing, he’ll be the cutest little kid you’ve ever seen,” his mom finished.

“Even cuter than me?” Tadashi pouted. His mom laughed again, shifted her arms, then reached up to ruffle his hair. It was the same gesture she always used when telling him how cute he was. It was his favorite compliment, just before the shoulder rub and ‘you’re so smart’.

Instead, she said, “you’re going to be brothers. You’ll be the same amount of cute.”

That didn’t seem to Tadashi to be the right answer. “I don’t want to share,” he complained.

This time Tadashi’s mom snaked her arm around his shoulders, and pulled him in to a tight, if sideways, hug. “What’s wrong with sharing?” she asked. “It doesn’t mean you lose anything. You just gain double what you had before.”

That didn’t seem to make sense either. Sharing meant not having as much time on the swings, or not getting to use his favorite color crayon during arts and crafts, or having to split his sandwich in half when a friend lost their lunch. Sharing was good, made his friends and teachers smile, but it definitely did mean losing something.

His mom saw the confusion on his face. “Think of it like this,” she tried. “When I see you, I think you’re the cutest thing in the world.”

Tadashi smiled. 

“And then when I see your brother, I think _he’s_ the cutest thing in the world too.”

Tadashi frowned.

“So in a couple years, when Hiro gets old enough for you two to play together, I’m going to see the two of you side by side and you’ll both be so much cuter than you ever were on your own.”

Tadashi was still confused. That sounded like a complicated word problem in mathematics, but his mom sounded so sure of herself when she said it, he had to concede. “OK,” he said, then stared back down at his blotchy faced brother.

His dad joined them at the couch later, gently chiding Tadashi for standing on the cushions. He slid his arms around his wife’s shoulders and kissed her check, then stared down at the baby as well. Tadashi stared up at his parents from his position in-between them. They were so enraptured by the baby, he wasn’t sure they even noticed him sitting there.

“Can I hold him?” Tadashi asked, to get their attention.

His dad instantly shifted away, and Tadashi worried he’d somehow said the wrong thing, but his mom just answered, “be gentle.” His dad helped support the baby’s head as his mom scooted the bundle into Tadashi’s lap. They showed him how to wrap his arms around the bundle, to support it best, how to cradle the baby so he felt comforted and wouldn’t begin to cry.

In his arms, the baby was smaller than Tadashi expected. Too small, his aunt had said. Born too soon. They’d had to finish hatching him at the hospital with the chickens’ eggs. Tadashi recalled the way the baby chicks on the TV looked after they fought their way out of their eggshells when they were born, and looked down his baby brother again, wondered if he had to fight his way into life like that, too.

It finally hit Tadashi, as Hiro slept in his arms, that this was his brother. His own, personal, baby brother. The picture books said that babies couldn’t take care of themselves, that they needed their moms and their dads to take care of them for them. Tadashi wasn’t either of those things, but he could help out, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I was feeling emotionally distraught after reading some fic in the fandom, so my friend tried to cheer me up by saying "at least no one is dead." To which I responded "their parents are dead!" She answered "yeah, but when are they not?" So I decided to write a fic where they're not.


End file.
